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So, it breaks down every single aspect of what happened so far that led many (me included) to distrust PGI in developing MWO. I still have a little faith that this kind of news will make them realize that launch won't do anything good to the game, but here's a list of the most notable passages (imho).
"Ghost Heat is a system in which players receive penalties to heat generation (that is, they generate more heat) if they fire more than a certain number of weapons of the same type at a time. But the system shipped with a number of problems.
First, it is completely undocumented in the game itself and incredibly newbie unfriendly; only those that read the forums are familiar with the feature, and even then, they only received data about how the system worked after harassing PGI for more details. Second, Ghost Heat hurts ‘Mechs that relied on large alphas of low-damage weapons: ‘Mechs like the Hunchback 4P, whose strategy is to “boat,” or equip as many of certain weapons as possible. Third, the system ended up being applied to weapons that didn’t need a nerf thanks to their already low viability, like the Autocannon/2 or Long-Range Missile/10."
And then it follows
"So far, however, #SaveMWO has been unsuccessful. The only developer to directly respond to the group was Garth Erlam, the PGI community manager, and one of the few high-profile PGI employees well-liked by the community. His responses were the community manager standard of “Passing this on up the chain.” A number of staff members not directly involved in development responded to the movement, but their reactions were a bit more terse and combative. One community moderator likened the movement to a “little rebellion,” and forum moderator Niko Snow took issue with negativity in the thread, consigning it to a subforum for “bad threads” known as Kaetaetoa, rather than cleaning out troll posts."
And then again:
"After the patch that included third-person view was set live, the forums exploded in what can only be described as a mushroom cloud of hate. The responses to the patch notes were overwhelmingly negative, and countless threads sprang up slandering PGI. Users began changing their forum signatures to mock PGI’s competence, trolls openly started flame wars, and every developer post was met with a degree of hostility that — while not quite as bad as the likes of Call of Duty players (NSFW) — boggled the mind in its totality."
And mostly notable:
At the end of this long history is one question: Does the Mechwarrior Online community have the right to be so angry?
The answer: absolutely.
And finally:
"Mechwarrior Online’s road to launch is a cautionary consumer tale, fraught with anger and betrayal. It shows how a company can take a fan base dedicated to an old IP and completely alienate it through lack of communication, unpopular features, and oathbreaking. It shows how players need to be cautious of supporting a project based solely on the IP backing it."
I'll leave any futher comment to the rest of the article for you to read and to discuss about it here. I wonder if PGI is aware of what press is talking about them, given Russ's "apology" and the pseudo September "lallalallalalal I don't hear anything" Developer Update... I fear not or a little.
Edited by John MatriX82, 30 August 2013 - 02:58 PM.
